TMDL in Desktop – Ep. 298

Episode 298 focuses on two developer-quality-of-life upgrades in Power BI Desktop: Copilot-assisted measure descriptions and the new PBIP + TMDL workflow. If you’ve ever tried to jam a large PBIX into Git (and immediately regretted it), this conversation is a clear signal of where the product is headed.

News & Announcements

• Generate measure descriptions with Copilot (Preview) — Copilot can now draft measure descriptions directly in Desktop. Use it as a first pass: review the output, but let the tool remove the busywork of getting started.

• FabCon Community Conference (Microsoft Fabric Conference) — The episode calls out the main conference dates (March 26–28) plus workshop days (March 24, 25, and 29). Use discount code Carlo100 for $100 off your ticket.

• Power BI Theme Generator (Tips+) — If you’re tired of “every report looks different,” the theme generator helps you build and iterate on a consistent report theme without reformatting everything by hand.

Main Discussion

TMDL is the kind of “under the hood” change that unlocks real governance. When your semantic model is stored as readable text files, you can review changes like code, automate releases, and avoid the classic “break-fix” cycle.

• With PBIP + TMDL enabled, your semantic model becomes a set of smaller, readable files instead of a single monolithic artifact.

• Meaningful diffs make Git and pull-request reviews feasible for measure edits, relationships, and metadata changes.

• That sets the stage for CI/CD: validation steps, repeatable deployments, and fewer surprises when promoting to production.

• The YAML-style format lowers the “only the hardcore folks can touch this” barrier compared to older TOM/JSON-heavy workflows.

• Preview status still matters: many organizations can’t adopt preview features, so start by experimenting in non-production projects.

• Editor tooling is already emerging (like a VS Code extension and syntax highlighting), which is where a lot of modern BI engineering workflows live.

• Copilot-generated descriptions are a great accelerant for documentation, but licensing and availability can be a real gating factor—plan for it.

Looking Forward

Enable PBIP + TMDL on a small model, commit it to a new repo, and run one change through a PR-style review so you can see exactly what TMDL diffs look like in practice.

Episode Transcript

0:29 welcome back to another episode of explicit measures podcast with Tommy Seth and Mike hello everyone and welcome back for those of you joining live you’ll see that a new arrival has occurred on the swag. powerbi store and I just been wearing it today co-pilot table t m I can’t read it backwards oh co-pilot told me to say it so that’s my new shirt so I’ll

1:00 it so that’s my new shirt so I’ll I’ll put the link if you if you like this shirt here with the nice co- pilet symbol on the front and some funny words on there I’ll I’ll put the the link up here for you as well so if you want to join in and get your own shirt if you want there’s a other shirt out there as well so that’ll be there sick sick sick Mike fun stuff it is fun if you show put any conference I’m probably going to be wearing one of these things now teasing co-pilot now we’ll see what we’ll see how much trouble I can get in so anyways

1:30 how much trouble I can get in so anyways and the and the shirt’s name is Skynet is coming so for those of you who like Terminator Skynet is here Skynet is here that reminds me we we we had an organizational event not long ago and we were talking about Ai and we were just throwing out ideas for ways in which we can improve the business utilizing it yeah and I I stood up we had a little group session for my group and I I I was like before I get started I just want to you

2:01 before I get started I just want to you before I get started I just want to I just want to say that I I for know I just want to say that I I for one look forward to the new takeover of our new overlords so whenever and however they want to do that they’re probably listening through the speakers already my name is Seth bow and I’m all for for [Laughter] it that’s true though it’s it’s like it’s it’s almost it’s changing my behavior cuz I’m I’m literally talking to my microphone in

2:32 literally talking to my microphone in meetings and like okay co-pilot I’m making notes for you now because I know you’re reading my transcript right so here’s the notes I want you to hear co-pilot so it’s gonna know all these things about how we’re talking and what we’re talking about I I don’t have to do anything in meetings now I have two Services called read Ai and fireflies I’m like Fred Fred’s the service name you you’ll take care of it I’m not even gonna pay attention and is still great it’s insane Fred’s got it you can you found it you found something that you

3:02 found it you found something that you can can name well that’s the name that they they gave it they like hey talk to Fred about your meeting I go I want I want to name it it myself little Seth Min I’m gonna I’m gonna call it Mike the Carlo Mike De Carlo please summarize my meetings please summarize this I’m gonna try to change the name to Seth Seth power so let’s do a couple intros here real quick and then we’ll jump into our main topic our main topic for today is

3:33 main topic our main topic for today is we’re actually going to talk about some recent features that have just appeared in powerbi desktop one of them being co-pilot which is why we’re starting to talk here with co-pilot and the second one being this new format called timle tmdl it’s a format that harb desktop is going to start using it’s in preview still so it’s still in preview however this is going to be I think a helpful feature for those of us who are going to check things in and look at building reports with code or building reports and storing them inside git so we’ll talk about that as our main topic but

4:04 talk about that as our main topic but before we get started let’s talk about a couple little openers here and our first opener really is around there is a Microsoft conference that’s coming out so the Microsoft conference is having a Microsoft fabric conference and you can go visit that at Azure datac comp. com and then it is on March 26th through to the 28th if you want to join there are workshops on the 24th and the 25th so the two days before the main conference and there’s a postcon workshop on the 29th you can use a discount code of Carlo 100 for $100 off

4:35 discount code of Carlo 100 for $100 off your tickets I’ll be speaking it to sessions there one around data flows and pipelines all that new fabric Gen 2 stuff and then also talking about spark and how to optimize and look at your spark read The Spark engine and what’s going on inside your powerbi environment or your fabric environment so I’ll be talking there at the conference it’s going to be a good sessions I think there’s be a lot of great learning elements there as well so feel free to join us we’ love to see you there the other announcements we have here is

5:07 have here is around this new co-pilot preview so something that we picked up on so February desktop has been released you can go download it now off of the Microsoft store if you go to like the it’s funny because I can’t really go to powerbi you can’t go to powerbi. com anymore it like immediately redirects you to app. power. com so I have to go to like like blog to get the homepage so that’s what I do now so I go to blog. par. com and then there you can click on products and then go download the most recent desktop version but

5:39 the most recent desktop version but before when you go down download there’s a whole bunch of new preview features and one of the preview features that we talked about on there and we found inside the new release for this month was you can now add measure descriptions with co-pilot and there’s a Microsoft blog post about this as well gentlemen your thoughts on making a measure descriptions with co-pilot yeah sign me up I I want to give the right credit

6:10 up I I want to give the right credit but I I think it someone who worked for table editor 3 and they actually created a macro a few months ago where it would actually go through all of your measures and use chat the measure I think that was Darren gospel in D studio and I think he used instead of using co-pilot he was using chat chat gpt3 table editor Tableau editor macro yeah and he was going he was he had written a little script that was

6:42 had written a little script that was using the co the token and the API call going to chat GPT passing it the measure and saying describe this measure and I remember in one God yeah I remember in one evening session of a user group we decided to have it write all the descriptions in Italian so you could you could change the name of the language you wanted to write it back in so you could have it describe the measure in Italian and write the measure descriptions back for you inside your

7:12 descriptions back for you inside your model which was funny because then none of the users in America could read it because it’s in English so they wouldn’t know what it was but in Italian wrote it so it has to be right that’s what I always tell everyone I train but no I always tell everyone I train but no this this has been out since I mean this this has been out since I probably think the last six months and I have it in taable editor 3 and I still use it to create descriptions but now that that’s already integrated this is just the start well to be clear making descriptions with measures was not an outof the-box

7:43 with measures was not an outof the-box experience this was a experience that someone had to create with a script so the scripting feature the extra code if you are a tab editor user could have been done like for months however Microsoft has taken note and this is something that we’ve talked about on the podcast a lot it was like like there’s no reason I don’t I don’t this is a lwh hanging fruit we should not have to describe measures anymore we should be able to throw it at an AI and have it start the wording of what that description of that column table and or measure would be doing and again it’s

8:15 measure would be doing and again it’s it’s something where you have to still read it you’re not going to just create it and walk away but I do think over time it’ll get better and then at least it gives you a starting point to describe what that measure is doing I thought I so this is just post now so there isn’t the official blog describing this yet no no no there is now right well there is a BL there is an official blog post around generate measure descriptions with co-pilot that is that officially out in preview it’s in preview right now this reads like it’s a one by one though right reads like a one

8:45 one by one though right reads like a one by one I’m not sure I understand every measure has to go through the properties click co-pilot as opposed to isn’t like across the board or was that also one by one I think you could pass I think you

9:02 I think you could pass I think you could actually well and and you can always again with Darren’s example I think you can modify the script to allow you to select multiple measures and it could just do an entire group of them if you selected them I I think it’s something that’s selectable I would imagine if it’s in preview you may be doing one at a time right now but maybe in the future you could multi select I think if you’re on the modeling page I think you can actually select multiple measures on the modeling page and try this out by the way I’m super stoked like this is the stuff that when we talk about the pain in the rear nobody

9:34 talk about the pain in the rear nobody wants to do it but it has to or like if doesn’t have to but like you should put the descriptions on things yeah this is exactly where like AI should cut corners for people cut cut time off of things for yeah exactly Corners this is not a corner cutting this is just saving time so one of the things here that’s interesting here is this co-pilot feature and this is what I don’t quite understand yet how Microsoft’s handling

10:04 understand yet how Microsoft’s handling this licensing for co-pilot fabric co-pilot is at a different level of pay than everything else that I’ve seen for co-pilot across the Microsoft Suite like for example if I want co-pilot in Excel word or other like just I want co-pilot in teams I can go out to the Microsoft store and buy co-pilot per user so I can buy one for a license for a user and then that leverages co-pilot when look at this enabling co-pilot inside fabric you’re only allowed to get it on an f64 or a P1

10:35 or a P1 capacity when you do not have a trial enabled so you may be able to read this article you may want to use this but unless you’re paying for a P1 or or f64 full out not a trial that’s the only time you can actually get what this looks like so you’re not going to be able to try the co-pilot features until you pay for the thing which I I feel is a little bit of a barrier to entry because yes I think people are going to want it but now I feel like this adds value at lower ends of the

11:06 this adds value at lower ends of the spectrum I like if I’m already paying for co-pilot as a user I want to use it in in desktop maybe I don’t use it in the service but maybe I want to use it for me I don’t know I just feel like I feel like there’s a little bit of a gap here for like how we can get this to work for for individual users as opposed to the entire fabric capacity yeah but isn’t isn’t that the whole deal though like I do you do you think that the Easy Button type things that AI capabilities

11:36 type things that AI capabilities introduce should be a free-for-all or is this is the is it fair that it’s not that I’m no I’m not arguing free or not I’m arguing why do I have to pay for a a co-pilot license for Michael in my tenant and I have to go pay for a co-pilot license at a fabric level like everything else I’ve been exp exploring with with co-pilot has been at the individual user level so I want it to be

12:07 individual user level so I want it to be like an and condition as opposed to an I want it to be an or condition not an and condition right if I if you pay for a co-pilot for the user I still want to use those features even though I’m a pro user because I’m paying extra money for co-pilot just give it to me on the other hand Co pilot for what though for fabric so you’re you’re saying you have to pay co-pilot for fabric and have an f64 no no you have to pay co-pilot for word excel

12:38 word excel teams and you have to buy a certain inside fabric high enough that copal will even turn on even though I’m paying for personally you need the 365 license and not and it’s an or completely separate completely separate they’re not linked that’s what my problem is they’re not linked confused I exactly my point office co-pilot has nothing to do with powerbi yes if I buy office co-pilot it doesn’t help me get co-pilot in Fabric and you can’t get powerbi co-pilot for an individual user again which is

13:10 an individual user again which is strange is it no it’s only on the pre only no no no no no is it strange is what I guess I’m saying like so if I’m if I’m looking at co-pilot forx because there are multiple different products for co-pilot or I should say you have co-pilot for office you have co-pilot for whatever you have co-pilot there’s at least four five or six that I know of right that are all individually licensed aren’t they and then you also

13:42 licensed aren’t they and then you also have co-pilot for fabric and powerbi is now part of that ecosystem so if you want to play in that space especially with like the capabilities of whatever is now present and coming that’s the fabric license that’s like that is AI in that license which don’t get me wrong this this calling it the same thing across all these things and Licensing them differently is going to be very costly

14:13 differently is going to be very costly one but two is confusing which I agree but it’s a different different I’m aware I guess I’m not aware of any other co-pilot things that you pay for like it’s either you pay for office co-pilot when I was looking this up because fabric co-pilot right or is there more I didn’t even know there was more there are more let me look them up I think the power apps ones but no because those are not included with office like the

14:43 not included with office like the business business applications but I think they were giv that away for free and then there’s a there’s co-pilot Studio which is completely separate though too because that’s building them yeah again if you’re using separ yeah but it’s like you’re you’re utilizing Azure machine learning at that point in AI with all that so you’re already off the spear now compared to that that to me copilot Studio think I think makes sense because you now you’re developing your own like that makes sense a little bit more to me

15:14 that makes sense a little bit more to me like you’re building your own type of co-pilot okay fine that makes more sense I just don’t understand how the licensing Works yet how it all intersects and it and it feels like this very disjointed like every team or product team has their own flavor of what Co is doing to design it for what they’re doing in their projects but I just just feels very disjointed co- pilot is like this very generic term of like oh it’s AI co-pilot for GitHub or co-pilot for git co-pilot for office now copilot for

15:45 git co-pilot for office now copilot for fabric and so you’re going to be spending like $100 a month just to get fabric to get copilot features no I don’t think so anyways I don’t know it’s confusing me it just makes me feel better that I got you the best Christmas present from Secret Santa just pilot not even yeah yeah was free it was just just given to me yeah that was been great anyways moving on from that interesting article figure it out eventually we’ll figure it out eventually there’ll probably be an episode on how to how to work with Co pilot licensing just just like powerbi

16:17 pilot licensing just just like powerbi licensing when it first came out oh yeah it’s gonna be so confusing oh my word yeah not fun let’s let’s transition over to our main topic for today let’s transition transition over to timle support inside powerbi desktop this is a preview feature that you can go turn on in powerb desktop so one you need to go out and download the most recent version of powerb desktop that’s the first thing you need to do and then second thing is you need to go into the preview features you have to click the little gear in the right hand side of your RBI desktop get

16:48 right hand side of your RBI desktop get into the settings go into preview features and then while you’re inside preview features you can turn on use the pbip format and also you can turn on the use the timle format so now you can open your reports and you can save your report as a pbip which is stands for powerbi project and when you save out the file it will save the data model side as a timle format so it will no longer be in Json and it will no longer your data model will no longer be a

17:18 your data model will no longer be a single very large model. Bim file it’ll now be broken into many components which is Pretty stinking cool if you ask me so that that’s the overview very briefly of of timble timle here let’s jump in with how we feel about it what are your guys’s initial thoughts does this make sense do we think people GNA are going to use this we should probably should back up why we’re spending so much time and why we’re so excited about a code or sure

17:50 we’re so excited about a code or sure Towler module definition language just real quick because I think a lot of people have had the great benefit and the pleasure of not having to deal with a Tom or this type of language before

18:04 a Tom or this type of language before this has been around for a while or at least the the concept of the Tom TBL object model the scripting language a lot of things that have run for years before powerbi and as you try to get more into it if you I’m sure you guys have as well with MDX or with t tablet editor macros or just trying to automate a little more from the back of your data it’s almost impossible because it’s such a

18:35 impossible because it’s such a completely different foreign language on how to reference something the different functions I think it’s what is it C or the back end or C++ so something that you’re not ever really using using and which made it hard to do any advanced development or try to codify it with timle this again new new feature that’s really coming out is rather than being in again

19:06 coming out is rather than being in again that encrypted language whereas good for computers bad for humans it’s in a language called yaml and the way it actually breaks out the all the text and your metadata is good for computers to read and process and also excellent for humans to read and process and that’s the big difference here yeah let’s let’s go if you’re talking about like history of things right so back in back in the day right there’s

19:37 so back in back in the day right there’s no Version Control for powerbi you don’t have any way of checking in things and seeing what version of files so people have pretty much adopted for my for my intensive purposes people have adopted the ability of when I make a powerbi file either a data set or semantic model Power report or a thin report a thick or thin report whatever you want to call it those things those objects where do you save them where do you put them and some of these files these PBX files that you were saving previously could get quite large if you have a lot of data tables

20:07 large if you have a lot of data tables in there you could have a multiple gig file that lives somewhere and so I think what you find is in it shops or business intelligence teams that come out of the it space they want to save these files somewhere and they’re trying to do it with Git and git does not like very large files like that so because the report and the model semantic model where saved as very large files this posed a challenge and I think Seth you’ve run into this a number of times like when you publish things out to the

20:37 like when you publish things out to the service how do what changed how do you how do you check some of the quality of like the models that we’re producing and how do they get out the door these are common it based challenges that you would use in it but the business doesn’t care about those things they’re just get stuff done make a powerbi file publish it beone move on but I think there’s more resilience as you as you think about governance and security and making sure these Solutions don’t break over time I think this is what you’re speaking to Tommy previously we didn’t have a a pattern like only the

21:07 we didn’t have a a pattern like only the super technical people could get access to this stuff because it was so Json heavy it was so technically heavy like it all that has existed for many many years like it’s been I don’t know decades I guess 10 years plus that this stuff has been built but it was just not very business user friendly let me say it that way is that does that sound like a good statement C certainly not business user friendly and with even in tools like pre powerbi with

21:38 even in tools like pre powerbi with tabular models in visual studio right Bas vs code Etc like deploying things was a step-by-step process and even as you’re describing things now I I would I would argue the vast majority of powerbi implementations don’t even try to use git or some sort don’t even try to use git or some source control oh totally because it of source control oh totally because it is extremely technical yeah and honestly for the amount of effort for not a good solution it’s easier to use

22:10 not a good solution it’s easier to use SharePoint Alm toolkit and just a SQL Server right ship it I I can do all of those like but still at the same time if I want to make a change and deploy it or I need to go modify something the largest challenge has been brake fixing because there’s no checks and balances because you can’t Source control stuff so to find breake fixing because I’m not sure if everyone’s heard what that what that means deploy it you break it now you

22:42 means deploy it you break it now you have to fix it a break a broken fix like you you thought you fix you fixed something but you break something else right something like that yeah so ultimately it like the juice is not worth the squeeze here right and it hasn’t been unless you had extremely technical folks that were very comfortable in these areas correct and even then because there’s so many limitations and and you are you’re using a lot of third-party tools you’re still struggling with separation of

23:13 still struggling with separation of things making sure they combine how do you verify validate Etc within that like there are great tools I love Alm toolkit I think it’s fantastic but you get very familiar with what what you shouldn’t do what you shouldn’t do directly on the analysis Services instance that works right as opposed to doing things the right way so for all of these challenges

23:43 right way so for all of these challenges that exist and there are pseudo Solutions and what pseudo it’s like oh somebody comes up with a an easier is way to do it but it’s still missing a couple pieces yep timle is is starting to change that and like push us in a direction of an actual method to introduce the the things that we’re missing in a unified fashion and that’s what’s exciting about it is like we’re

24:13 what’s exciting about it is like we’re now moving closer to having something that gets us to Full Source control whereby if you’re going to teach new people a new process it will work hopefully at the end of the day see seamlessly end to to end and I want to I want to be also clear here I think it’s not solely timle alone that’s pushing this this direction right I think it’s also the pbip format that’s also a very big part of this as well because timle is focusing

24:43 well because timle is focusing on the model side right taking and again if you were familiar with some of the very technical tools tabular editor would do could save a model to files or save a model to a folder so in tabular editor you could go open a model save it down to a lot of little tiny files still in Json format but at least the entire semantic model was broken out into smaller objects so that way if I change a measure I could see where that measure was changed if I track this over time or other

25:14 track this over time or other things that were helping out with that as well so I feel like that’s been very useful to be able to have these other tools now one one comment around your your other tools Seth because I I agree with you 100% previously we had to use other tools like Alm toolkit tabular editor 2 Visual Studio was another one I think remember I remember building initial models with visual studio and having to deploy things was such a pain and the program kept crashing at the time it was just so unhelpful to working it was like liked

25:45 unhelpful to working it was like liked working with ever SSD tools or something else you had to install inside vs code and visual studio and it was like it was just such a mess I hate hated absolutely hated deploying models through Visual Studio because it was just so clunky and it broke all the time so that being said there’s some push back from organizations that would say we don’t allow third party tools if Microsoft doesn’t let us control it we cannot use

26:15 doesn’t let us control it we cannot use third party tools yeah so that for some companies anything technical related was a was an immediate blocker and a stoppage they can’t develop with this stuff they couldn’t yeah in large part like there’s a lot of organizations especially the larger you get where every service you have to use has to go through checks and balances so it’s like vetting system yeah right like even if your reason is listen guys we’re we’re deploying things or we’re having to

26:45 deploying things or we’re having to redeploy entire models and reports and it’s costing us a lot of money and this one tool just lets us make changes you’re like okay well we’ll have to talk yes we’ll have to talk about that a little bo well they run that through security and see what they say and some organizations just say no you can’t install that thing on your machine or no you can’t have it or no it won’t work and then and now

27:06 or no it won’t work and then and now you’re stuck so now you’re spent using more time to slowly go through these things and then I think what you find is the business gets frustrated and goes off and either does this on a different machine and data leaves the organization accidentally because people are trying to use these tools on computers they can and then bringing the files back over so like I think it creates problems so I I to your point I don’t want to I don’t want to say timle is giving us all that cor it’s not it is it is the like a

27:37 that cor it’s not it is it is the like a big step forward towards making all of that integration work and that is exciting like on two two facets from my perspective one is the actual simplification of how we manage things but also that they’re thinking about this being a problem area for Enterprise Solutions like we’re discussing and the challenges around that so to have a product that works seamlessly end to end

28:08 product that works seamlessly end to end and offers a integrated way in which we can manage and make better deployments of changes into an Enterprise ecosystem is is I’m super excited about well honestly the big thing too is and Mike I think you actually put that in the U the post that put this on online on Twitter X we we’ve always talked about the developer

28:38 we’ve always talked about the developer side with timle and GitHub repos and get repos and the powerbi projects but there’s some there’s something very unique here if table editor 3 is the powerbi professional tool of choice and I’ll keep saying even as maruso said if you use powerbi once a month you need to have lator three and if that’s a developer developer tool with timle we have the text in a very easy to human read format and this

29:09 very easy to human read format and this is something we’ve always talked about is our data lives in that in the data set and lives in the service but how do we translate it into our our descriptions from the business the the link that you sent was like hey we can just use timle and write co-pilot to it because it’s basically text fields and it’s it’s just yaml which is very human computer readable is it yaml or yaml esque yeah it’s not yaml directly so yaml is yet another markup Lang language so it’s very similar to

29:40 Lang language so it’s very similar to yaml but it’s not the exact so Microsoft took yaml and I think derived a similar pattern and how they’re doing this so yaml is very pythonesque where it like the number of indents matters spacing matters right where you put code on different lines matters but it is just a text file so you can go get the I think that’s I think that’s I think it’s close to yaml but it’s not the actual same thing so I think that’s I think it’s

30:10 thing so I think that’s I think it’s close there as well but Microsoft has has borrowed like the the methodology of what yaml is doing and then Mis made it easier to read and I think Tommy to your point though the challenge is I don’t want to have to like it’s all the it’s all the doodads that go along with Json like so what happens here I think behind the scenes is you write things in timle timle gets read by desktop timle then gets translated back into a Json object and then gets shoved back into a model.

30:40 and then gets shoved back into a model. Bim so essentially everything that runs in power. com is still running on a Json file that’s generated but these these are all files that are being used and interpreted that are easy to consume from us and I think your point there Tommy is very well taken like Yeah The Reason Reon this is amazing is because I can look at it and it’s it can has it has coloring it’s very easy to read the indentations make a lot of sense it’s very logical and how it is outlined which makes it very easy for us to like make changes so if I want to go look at

31:12 make changes so if I want to go look at a format string or edit something it’s very easy and I also Echo this too there’s no more curly braces there’s no more commas there’s no more nested objects all that stuff goes away and all of the syntax of Json disappears and then we can focus on what we really care about which is what’s the name of the column what’s the data type of the column does it have a formatting for string what does that look like like we can you can be more specific around exactly what we’re doing on the actual data and it’s much clearer to read

31:43 data and it’s much clearer to read because a lot of the properties that we don’t care about are just not showing see and and this that alone mik is I think can’t be understated so a lot of it is yeah it’s basically the am syntax in the structure from the indenting and we don’t have to worry about spaces or brackets and quotations and a lot what languages use ammo or like what tooling your GitHub Pages I think there’s a lot of in a sense human

32:15 think there’s a lot of in a sense human readability with the ammo that I love that how why the Microsoft team’s going there where also too we can feed this into other services if now we just have Tex field Tex field obviously we’ve talked about the get in great detail I don’t think that’s anything that we have I’m we will continue to but having the emo file and being able to quickly edit or verify but also now that we can utilize tools like

32:45 also now that we can utilize tools like co-pilot the GitHub version I guess or other things for us to Simply copy and paste like hey chat TPT or sending something a piece of the code or snippet to someone to take a look where they don’t have to open the entire file this is there’s to me that’s where the bigger impact is because we’ve known what G’s going to do in the version history but I think we’re now seeing the other implications of it yeah to be clear my post on Twitter was not connecting timle and copilot

33:17 not connecting timle and copilot together I was just picking out the features that I found in desktop that were now recently announced right so you were now recently announced right so there there’s no I’m not trying to know there there’s no I’m not trying to say timle and co-pilot go together yet maybe that will in the future but for right now those are just two distinct features that I found really interesting in the February release of desktop but in the future maybe there’s something there where you’re going to feed the timle format over to co-pilot and co-pilot will be able to read through it what I find most well

33:47 to read through it what I find most well not interesting but one of the things looking forward to the most I guess is we we open this discussion with our clear disdain of the previous Visual Studio solution but looking looking back at ry’s original post around the preview of timal like their their goal is to create an extension for visual studi so quite quite ambitious to change all of our our previous negative experiences

34:17 our our previous negative experiences into positive ones and is it Visual Studio or vs code I believe it’s for vs code or maybe it works for both automatically I don’t know well you’re right vs code EXT extension and I I will I’ll be the first one to admit if I’m developing in different pieces of software I will choose vs code over Visual Studio any day sure because vs code is so much more lightweight seems to be 100% less buggy and when I want an an added package what do they call them

34:48 an added package what do they call them Tommy what’s the things they they have on the other side here it’s like extensions if I want an extension they work well they install Easy and they just seem to like they update I get I I I get it from our perspective we never we should have always had something like vs code totally we never should have been introduced to visual studio world the the robustness of that tool for all of the things that it built for many years in develop totally it was like throwing people who had no idea what they were doing in that Arena into that

35:18 they were doing in that Arena into that Arena and that’s exactly the outcome that you would expect it’s like what chaos and other disaster we learned we adapted yeah or or we just left it alone and just walked away it it was more of like we just like ignored it and went away just said this is not going to work for us let’s get away from this oh we were fortunate powerbi came out and said nah come over come over here over here get over here it’s like one of those guys from like Mortal Kombat it’s the guys get over

35:48 Kombat it’s the guys get over here get over here scorpion scorpion that’s what I thinking about I shouldn’t know that so well but yeah that scorpion we can go through all anyways anyways oh good times so I’m gonna I’m going to go as far as saying here some something else I think is very interesting so one the timle format Works fairly well and one thing I

36:10 Works fairly well and one thing I haven’t done testing on and I’m actually trying to test as we’re on the podcast right now is okay so for example let’s imagine that you have powerb desktop open you’re going to save a model as the pbip format and you’re going to keep the timle formatting on so that means it’s going to save the model in the timle format which is very great I love it what happens when you publish that timle file into powerbi. com and what happens when you sync that new

36:40 and what happens when you sync that new model with your git repo do you see in the git repo timle formatted files or does it still stay as the model. Bim so I’m going to go check that right now I’ll let if I can get in there and open up the repo and I’ll I’ll check it to mix more but I I think if it’s not happening right now I would imagine moving forward you should be able to see the timle formatted files inside your your repo and I’m just going to

37:11 and I’m just going to confirm if it’s there or not do you want music no I don’t I don’t I think I just added it here and I don’t think it’s there yet so it it may be still using the model. Bim format currently so I’m I I saved a file I saved it in the Tindle format and I’m just going to confirm I actually did do it correctly on my desktop here but I think the round robin trip here of going desktop to service into git would make sense if that stays in that Tindle format all the way

37:41 in that Tindle format all the way through but I don’t know if it’s going to do that right now initially and I don’t think my initial testing is showing that it’s it doesn’t look like it’s doing it right now yeah that’s pretty slightly worrying well but also like it’s hot off the press it’s in preview right now they’re still figuring things out right like how do you cut over to it what what do you mean by that well if like do I have to redeploy I would assume I’m redeploying all my all my models I would imagine so and then at the same time then like man confusing

38:13 the same time then like man confusing this how like if the third party tools like tab your letter to Alm to par tools whatever yep adopt the new format do you have two versions of your tool or does it just it just play play just consume whatever you’re using you just consume whatever you’re using oh this could get tricky right I know oh this could get tricky right I see you’re I see you’re saying because you need when they when they release this you have to wait for all the other tooling to kind wait for all the other tooling to catch up is it are they all of catch up is it are they all going to jump in on this bandwagon and

38:43 going to jump in on this bandwagon and start producing these timle type files all at all at once my understanding is like when you save when you save a if you’re in desktop and you’re working with a timle formatted pbip project it it takes that project and it compresses it into PBX and then sends the PBX up to the service to publish it it doesn’t necessarily grab the timle files and like say oh we keep them in timle format and then send it up so I don’t know yet I’m not sure how this is going to

39:13 going to work this is interesting be interesting to see if it’s just part of the deployment or if it’s actually changing the structure of the model and how we interact with it in the tabular models because that’ll change things that’s that’s impct because well like technically can you imagine if you didn’t M have a migration path like if it required changes you wouldn’t want a an environment at least from the Enterprise level that had different versions of things and different

39:43 versions of things and different deployment strategies and ways to do stuff oh that would be bad that’ll be it like it’ll be interesting to see how they come out with like hey here’s here’s a way well will they come out with a hey here’s a way in which you can migrate onto this or does it just plug-and playay and work and I would I it’s got to be somewhat backwards compatible no matter what it just has to be you can’t you can’t roll out a hard a hard Fork like this so much not

40:14 much not necessarily I guess you could technically do it but I would I would I would like it to be as a developer of this I would like it to be backwards compatible yeah so whether I’m deploy a model with the model. Bim or I decide I’m going to transition I’m going to do timle it should be an easy transfer from one format to another ideally you’re not losing anything there’s no data you’re missing it’s just the structure it’s just the structure is changing so there’s nothing that’s gone you’re not taking away things it’s just

40:44 taking away things it’s just reformatting it in a way that is easier to read and in more files right before it was like one big know model. Bim file now it’s just 10 or 15 smaller files that have okay here’s your table here’s your here’s your cultures the the different languages you want to use here’s the different measures so there’s now files for those things I’d be shocked if there were no connections into the actual data which would force a re a re a republish well I I don’t think I think that would I would expect a

41:15 think that would I would expect a republished to work yes but I would imagine like so for examp let me think let me think small lift on large models man oh I would totally agree well and if you have a lot of partitioning going on on those tables and you’re gonna you’re going to flip up that again my understanding is that is that is the scenario where this would be the most used valuable correct in those big a major major migration well let me I’m going to push you a bit more on that major migration

41:45 you a bit more on that major migration like yes it’s a major migration but a costly exercise most likely I don’t know I don’t know how big of an exercise that will actually cost you if I have to redeploy a republish an if I have to republish an entire model in in reports that are that is a large model I’m sorry just model the model the model is a large model with many partitions now that I would agree with it is a costly exercise because and time

42:17 costly exercise because and time consuming especially if you don’t have scripting already built out for it to autoload partitions for you it doesn’t even matter it’s just a time it’s a time and effort issue like like for that to cycle and reload all the partitions 26 gever later yeah no Mike we’ve already seen the complications with converting a powerp ex that I publish and they get workspace and some things being Lost in

42:49 workspace and some things being Lost in Translation so now we have PBX potentially a pbip you have the project folder which is a different structure than the pvip there’s the PBR and now we’re dealing with timle and you may have the Legacy Json structure as well I don’t see timle being as that much of a lift though it’s not about being a lift it’s about the conversions yeah I just we’re making an assumption but it’ll be interesting to see

43:20 but it’ll be interesting to see whether or not we have to what efforts we have to do to get onto it yeah I I think the data if if you had to compare like what data is contained in the model. Bim and what data is contained in now the new timle format there’s no difference there’s no difference in the types and amount of data that’s there it’s just the formatting of it will be different so I think from that perspective it’s not as much of a lift now to your point Seth like talking about models with large large number of partitions and you’re going to have to probably redeploy them so you get the timle type formatting

43:52 so you get the timle type formatting yeah and that will be a very large lift for organizations because they know have to plan the down time to reload all the stuff if they really want to get to this new format and again I’m not recommending this format until it gets out of preview I don’t know how long it will stay in preview this could be a long run inside preview like the Azure Maps which was like preview for like years this may be something that’s in preview for years I don’t know because it needs a lot of runtime and testing to get it right so to that point I think it it

44:25 right so to that point I think it it it’s not something you you want something you would want to adjust and play around with but I I’m not sure I would put production workloads on it right away stuff will break does that make [Music] [Music] sense all right great stuff stuff will break stuff will break that’s that’s technical term hey break fix well if if there’s anyone who’s working on a on a good on a good solution it’s ruy like of all the developers I trust inside the Microsoft ecosystem personally I have a

44:55 Microsoft ecosystem personally I have a relationship with ruy I know he’s amazing I’ve seen the stuff he develops in his PBI monitor solution it’s top-notch he’s really good so he understands the developer really well and I think he’s going to do a good job of making the right decisions to to get an improvement in the process but

45:12 an improvement in the process but without doing with too many caveats or breaking breaking Solutions that’s and that’s honestly as a developer and running a development team that’s hard to do to build new things without breaking all the old stuff that’s a challenge but I think ru’s got the the right team and I think he’s the right mind to do that kind the right mind to do that thing I would agree with the the of thing I would agree with the the right mind I ruy is one of the most most thorough solution Builders I’ve I’ve ever seen 100% and work Andor listen to

45:43 ever seen 100% and work Andor listen to so the fact that he’s on on this particular job y should everybody should give everybody the warm and fuzzy so while we’re talking about like how not catastrophic but like how how it’s going to be pain to my M grade on too blah blah blah maybe he’s got this already figured out and he’s like oh look you you fools yeah you fool you minor you little peons well have you ever seen ruy ruy did a presentation a while ago he was doing a circuit of like things you can hack in powerbi yeah and

46:14 things you can hack in powerbi yeah and he was literally going through like all the backend apis and if you hit this API you could do this and if you hit that API it would spit out a model that had all this formatted stuff in it and he and you could open this PBX file and do this to it and it will still work but if you do that to it it won’t me he had like a hundred little nuanced tips and tricks and things that he was getting into that was like all super developer Centric and he was manipulating the PB file to like a really high degree without without Microsoft’s like without

46:44 without without Microsoft’s like without any of the the without any support like it was like it was all unsupported stuff but it was doing it and it was working and he knew how to make everything run like we see what you’re doing with all that why don’t you come over here come on our side how build it right fix it but everything a lot of stuff that he developed in his his hacking powerbi it was a lot around cic CD and it was a lot around pulling apart the file and getting all the pieces of the file out and he did a

47:14 the pieces of the file out and he did a lot more like automation right if I if I’m a company I want to automate or build reports programmatically or build data sets programmatically you couldn’t do it but ruy was building the things that building the components that would let you automate creation of that stuff it’s it’s the developer mindset it’s you have Mike right like this I don’t I don’t like the the manual steps I’m taking this is ridiculous I will spend however much time it takes me to automate this thing so I don’t have to do this thing that annoys me yes right do it once learn

47:46 annoys me yes right do it once learn it do it twice automate it third time don’t do it again like if you’re doing something three times you’ve spent too much time on it already you should have automated step two yeah yeah totally agree on that one so with that any other final thoughts I guess we should do some final thoughts here around final thoughts for timle as we think about this new formatted feature I hope you’re enjoying it in desktop go out and try it out it is a preview feature so make sure you go into desktop you have to turn it on inside the settings so I’m sure someone’s going to blog about it or

48:17 someone’s going to blog about it or you’ll go look at our tweet that’s in the in the comment the description below here so you can actually see what it looks like but there’s a there’s a setting you have to turn on to do that any final thoughts Tommy for Tommy for yourself man I am so looking forward for the vs code extension I love extensions in vs code but they have the syntax highlighting for one for a language for me I finally get a syntax highlighting just for me in vs code which is very exciting but I think all the other things we’re gonna be able to do with this you realize it’s already out though

48:47 this you realize it’s already out though right in preview but the vs code extension is not the vs code extension is tmdl it’s got a GitHub repone it’s got a whole bunch of nothing in it nope it’s out on the I’m using it right now it’s formatted for me already there’s no link to it man it’s it’s literally you Google the extension tmdl and it’s the first one that shows up something new on the podcast Tommy’s learning something new right now this dumb repo to update

49:22 and hey Microsoft add links to your extension so people know they’re out it’s out there yeah all you to do is all you to do is talk to Mike I talk to me okay syntax highlighting highlighting and more coming soon yeah there’s more features coming but it does do the syntax highlighting you’re asking for logo and it does and it doesn’t have the logo it’s literally a little tiny Square it’s so it’s very rough it’s in version 0. 3 so it’s very

49:52 version 0. 3 so it’s very early it only has a th000 downloads so Tommy will be, 1 downloads first first update yeah exactly well I’m excited for again not just the whole development and the developer side of this but to really extract and have this readable to share for all the other things we can feed it into now there’s a lot of cool things coming with this I totally agree Seth final thoughts for you where do you see this going or how do

50:22 you see this going or how do you see this using this in your organization what are your final thoughts no I love the incremental steps that that we’ve been seen in administration and Enterprise the fact that powerbi is part of the fabric ecosystem hopefully that’s accelerating some of this yeah the the more the better that we can control or put put controls around our Enterprise reporting and make it easy for ourselves in deployment to treat it like the production product that it is I’m always a big fan of so good to

50:52 I’m always a big fan of so good to see that we’re making progress I’ll Echo your sentiment there as well Seth I I feel like the story right now for me is look at powerbi look at it growing up like we’re we’re now hitting teenage years right now in powerbi has it been out for in the teens Years yet how many years has it been out now when did it start 2015 S8 something like that so we’re still we’re not quite we’re not quite at the teenage years yet are we in the T yet no we’re no we’re not are we dog years though are we in

51:24 not are we dog years though are we in dog products like I don’t think I don’t think products go by human years do they like they got get some accelerator it’s like a translation right so it it feels to me like we’re now in a place where powerbi is now finally growing up we’re getting some really cool tools and Microsoft is listening and competing in the market with and then building what we want for the Enterprise like this is this feels really good so very pleased to see this happening ruy keep up the good work

51:56 happening ruy keep up the good work really like this very excited to see if this goes I’m really hoping that we can get to a place where this is not in preview forever that’s my only concern here I would like to get stuff out the door and get it get it solidified enough that we could say at least some of it’s released at least release portions of timle into the ecosystem that lets you use it without it having to be in previewed because some companies won’t be able to because it’s technically in preview still so I’d like to see some of it released initially to get started and then from there supporting more

52:26 and then from there supporting more features as it goes along so that would be that would be nice with that we thank you very much for your time we we appreciate your ears we hope you enjoy this episode around talking about co-pilot and this new thing called timle hopefully it gave you some more information around what these are share with somebody else if you’re talking about this with your company if you’re thinking about Enterprise tracking versions of your reports and your semantic models this is a great tool that will eventually be in your tool belt to help you do that so definitely take notice of this and if you find someone else who needs this information

52:56 someone else who needs this information please share the podcast with them as well Tommy where else can you find the podcast you can find us in apple and Spotify wherever you get your podcast make sure to leave a rating it helps us out a ton do you have a question an idea or a topic that you want us to talk about in a future episode head over to powerbi tips podcast leave your name and a great question or mediocre one or mediocre we we’ll take we we even answer those spin it we’ll spin spin it something we’ll take what we can get

53:27 something we’ll take what we can get right now so maybe we’ll create an episode of all of the Just thrown the thrown in questions yeah the thrown in questions yeah with that we appreciate your time sure we’ll see you next time and we appreciate you we’ll we’ll catch you on the next episode thank you all very much and we’ll see you next

54:12 [Music] out

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